


A Much More Vicious Motivator

by Coffee_Flavored_Kisses



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: AU, Client!John, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Murder, Violence, dark!Sherlock, murderer!Sherlock, serial killer au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 01:27:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1532588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses/pseuds/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes: Consulting detective, most brilliant man in the world, master researcher, serial killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Much More Vicious Motivator

**Author's Note:**

> AU - Sherlock is a consulting detective with a dark side. John is a client who would like help with research on a writing project.

Chapter One

He sits with one arm draped carelessly over the side of the chair, the other placed in his lap, twirling a ring box between his fingers. As you enter the room, he looks up at you, a smile playing across his face before his eyes fall to the box again. His legs, crossed at the knee, are stretched before him as far as they can reach – which isn’t very far. He clears his throat when you sit down. He looks up again. He greets you.  
All he mentions is his name. He is John Watson, a doctor currently working in a clinic on the south end of your street. He waked over today rather than taking a cab. The weather has been so lovely lately. He thought he should take advantage.  
You ask him what his problem is. What brings him here to Baker Street? That smile flashes over his mouth again, though only for a second, and he places the ring beside him.   
Details can be of the utmost importance at times, but not these details. You don’t care who he’s dating or when they met or what colour her eyes are in the candlelight or how many cats she owns. You care what she’s done to bring him here. Clearly he plans to propose to her, and clearly he believes it was important to bring the ring in order to prove so. But why should you care?  
Oh.  
Finally the details make more sense. Finally they’re less redundant. Finally they matter.  
He asks you hesitantly to look into a delicate manner concerning his prospective fiancée. He believes she may have a secret bank account overseas, and that she might be syphoning money from his account and placing it in hers. He hasn’t much, he tells you, but they’re comfortable. Possibly she’s only taking enough to make it seem as though the difference between the balance calculated in his ledger and the actual balance could be due to some minor subtraction errors.  
But he’s stopped withdrawing from his account. He stopped weeks ago. He acquired a bit of money from an odd-job and is getting by with that. And yet the money continues to disappear. Five pounds here, ten pounds there, and nearly three hundred since the time he’s chosen to render it effectively inactive.  
It all seems so obvious to you. In fact, it’s obvious to him as well, or he wouldn’t be here. You could easily explain that she’s assuming a false identity in order to gain access to his funds, and that yes of course she’s stealing from him because he loves her and that is the most commonly repeated human error in history. You could tell him all of that, and he’d be gone in minutes. Gone to break it off with her. Gone to sue for his money back. Gone to do god-knows-what.  
But you don’t. There’s something about him that keeps you riveted to his story. No, not the bits where he tells you about – what is her name? Mary Something? It’s not the bits about Mary Something. It’s when his eyes dart to the floor in shame as if it is his fault he’s fallen in love. And you suppose it is. It’s when he clears his throat to fill the silence permeating between his words because he’s trying to regain his composure. It’s his manner as he works with everything in him to keep from breaking down from the hurt she’s inflicted on him.   
And it’s something else, but you don’t know what. You don’t like not knowing.  
You agree to help him look into the matter. He must drive with you to the bank, then to her employer, then to this place and that for matters of resource and research. Fact-checking. Data collection.  
Is any of it necessary? Of course not. But it keeps you two together, and for now, that’s all you want.  
He sees the truth now. There are no tears in his eyes because he’s been taught they are a sign of weakness, and no man – especially no military man – would cry in front of another man over a woman who never loved him. You’re grateful he holds back. Even more that he doesn’t want to talk about it like they sometimes do.  
Before you know it, you two are in a pub. He tells you war stories, and you tell him detective stories. Both of you give first-hand accounts, and both of you are genuinely in awe of one another. He’s a good man at the heart of him. He doesn’t mind you at all. In fact, he’s impressed when you’ve told him his life’s story. He laughs at the jokes your colleagues find distasteful. He thinks you’re brilliant. You are.  
It’s two in the morning, and he’s half-drunk. He’s thanking you for your help and returns briefly to the story of how he should have known. He did. He should go home right now and tell her off. He won’t. He’s got half a mind to kick her out of the house the next morning. He will.  
When he says goodnight, you want to make sure he gets inside the cab alright. You want to see him off. You want to go home with him. But you’ve had three beers and it’s very late. You wish him a pleasant remainder of his night and go home.  
It’s not unusual for you not to sleep. You’ve gone days without sleeping. Pacing yourself correctly, you can go as long as a week without more than an hour at a time devoted to sleep. Da Vinci’s practise of polyphasic sleep inspired you long ago, and you’ve since perfected it. At least when you need to. But tonight is a different kind of awareness. Your mind is racing with thoughts of your day – of your client. You think about his problem. You think about his wisdom and lack of judgment. You think of how he will probably be hesitant to trust anyone after what she did to him. But… he trusted _you_. Why did he trust _you_?  
You try warm milk, white noise, composing, reading, analysing those same five slides you’ve been experimenting with for days now. Nothing calms you. Nothing wears you down. Nothing distracts you. All roads lead to John Watson – the thought of him, the scent of him, the feel of him. You recall that time earlier when you two sat in the taxi, your arms beside each other’s, the occasional brush of his elbow against yours. You think of his laugh when you spoke, you think of his eyes when you deduced, you think of the compliments and the flattery and how you in all your glory have never felt so absolutely worshipped as you felt in his presence. But it was something more than how he made you feel. It was him. It was all of him.   
You finally resort to something you’ve not had to do in ages. You lie in bed and picture that man and… you touch yourself. You close your eyes and imagine his body over yours, his lips pressed to your chest, his small, strong hands holding you against the mattress. You imagine his body writhing with yours, his breath against your throat, the length of him hard on your thigh as his hands reach to touch you. To touch you. To touch you. To tou—  
God, Mrs Hudson! God damn her and her tea and her noises at 7 AM! How could all that time have passed already? How could it be daylight so soon?  
There’s no possibility of your being able to concentrate now. Not with _her_ there. She means well, but _god_ is she obnoxious at times. And is it just you, or does she always know the exact wrong time to interrupt?  
You allow your body to calm down before you dress. Throwing on your best dressing gown, you make your way to her in the sitting room. She wants to talk about how she still misses her husband on occasion and how she sometimes wishes she were back in Florida. You remind her that he was a filthy, conniving, rotten, cheating, cold-hearted junkie bastard. She nods in agreement because she’s well aware.  
If your night was awful, your day is just dreadful. Boring clients with boring problems and boring lives ask you to look into cases that prove the answer there in the problem. Not only have you no need to leave your flat, but these people have no reason to come. They’re idiots, the lot of them. They’re not like John. John knew, but his goodness hindered him from observing the truth. Out of the kindness of his heart, he gave the benefit of the doubt to the woman he loved. We’ve all found the fault in love. You included, Mr Holmes.  
Lestrade has nothing at the Yard and your emails only make you wish you’d never got off your drug problem. After all, is it a problem if it cures your boredom? You beg the detective inspector to find something for you, but he tells you he’s waiting for DNA results to rule out a suspect before he needs you. You could follow up with Molly and convince her you need those results faster, but Molly is the last thing you want.  
Dark comes almost as fast as the light had earlier. You change for the fourth time today, but this time you plan on going out. It’s not something you do often – in fact you haven’t since Greg convinced you to forsake your beloved cocaine. But after the past two days, you need a fix. And not the kind that comes in the seven per cent solution.  
Instead of your long, signature cloak you don for the public eye to behold, you choose the shorter, thinner one. You extend the hood over your head and trek out into the city in your dark jeans and buttoned shirt. This isn’t how your fan base knows you, so you’ve no reason to suspect you’ll be seen. The key to a great disguise is learning how to hide in plain sight, after all.  
This club is new, and you’re glad for that. No one knows you here, and no one wants to. It’s a sea of black netting and half-hidden faces, and that’s what you love about this scene. How many men here are married to women and have children and lead successful lives at the tops of their occupational field?   
You estimate that roughly thirty-nine percent fit that narrative.  
All you really want is one drink and a chance to get off with some half-baked, nameless twink who’ll take you into the alley and suck you off without a second thought. What you get, however… you could never have anticipated that.  
You could swear it’s John. Of course, you can’t see his face, but from the back he’s a dead ringer. Same body mass index, same salt-and-pepper hair cut short like John’s, clothes like John’s, legs like John’s arms like John’s feet like John’s John John John John…  
He turns around when you’ve laid your hand to his shoulder. It’s not John. But he’s cute and he fancies you and he might do for what you wanted in the first place. You offer to buy him a drink. He offers to take you home.  
You’ve just walked out the door and he’s trying to find a cab. You take him by the hand and lead him ‘round back – you tell him it’s faster, more private. He wants to kiss you, but you have no interest in that. Kissing implies sentiment, and anyone who’s known you any longer than this generic John knows how you feel about that sort of thing.  
So you tell him what you _do_ want, and he seems just fine with that. You’ve got his back to the brick piss-stained outer wall of the club and your hand holds you up as his body moves down to acquiesce your request. His fingers are thick and clumsy – nothing like a doctor’s – and you find yourself becoming angry when he takes too long on your belt. Once his mouth is on you, however, your tensions ease. He seems well-versed enough on this sort of thing, and you look to either side of you periodically as he continues. It’s Tuesday. No one’s ever out on these streets on a Tuesday night.  
You’re barely focusing on the ministrations generic John applies because he’s just that – generic. He’s been at it three minutes now, but you both feel as though it’s been hours. He pauses to ask you if you want to fuck him. You nod. That might work better.  
He turns and stands and presses himself to the brick as he drops his trousers and arches himself into position. You look around again just to be sure, and you reach into your pocket for a condom. You may be in it for the anonymous sex, but you have no interest in disease. Not in this context. He waits patiently as you line yourself to him, and you see that he must do this often as you penetrate him with ease. This _is_ better – yes – much better. In only seconds you are already close, and you hold his hips and close your eyes and think of John again…  
Then he’s talking. He’s telling you to move faster. He’s calling your sexy. He’s talking. He’s bloody talking.  
You tell him to shut up, and you sigh in disgust when you need to work yourself up again for him. The process repeats, and again you tell him to stop talking. He tells you to make him stop.   
You comply.  
Your fingers wrap around his throat as you plunge into him deeper. He lets out a shrill sound of pleasure but can no longer talk with your hands like this. Thank god. You thrust harder, though not for his sake. You become unconscious of your hands, of what they are doing, of how hard they are pressing, of how enjoyable it is to fuck someone who doesn’t feel the need to talk through the process, or who couldn’t even if they did.  
His body tenses, and you find it harder to get inside him. You tell him to relax, that you’re almost there. You tell him to bend over. You tell him to move for you.  
His body is limp in your hands. You still hold him by his throat.  
You turn him around and look into his eyes. Red burst blood vessels surround his dark blue pupils. Splotches of purple intersperse themselves over his skin. He has vomited.  
He is dead.  
You look around again, but this time in panic. His body falls from your grip and onto the gravel as you wring your hands as if they’re wet, and that’s the only problem. You hadn’t finished, but you remove the condom and tuck it into your pocket hurriedly before you zip. You’ve seen dead bodies before. Hell, you live for the work you perform on them. But never have you been the one to put them there.  
You stand over him, looking down. For some reason, you find yourself smiling, but you walk away. You have to.  
You wait for the guilt to strike and take you to a place you haven’t visited in a very long time. You wait to hate yourself for taking a life. You wait to let your mind tell you how to cover it up. You wait for a confession blurted to your cabbie in a moment of fear. You wait to feel something. Anything.  
You don’t.  
It’s 3:22 AM when you finally fall into bed. You’re still smiling, and you’re still not sure why. Something feels different now, but not the kind of different you thought it might feel an hour before.   
You set your head to the pillow and sleep more soundly than you have since childhood.  
…  
In the morning, Mrs Hudson tells you of an old friend of hers who’s coming for tea later. She tells you how they used to make crowns from wildflowers and ride the sheep at her uncle’s country home. She tells you you’d love her uncle’s country home. You doubt that very much. She kisses your cheek and leaves.  
Lestrade has called. A body has been found dead from strangulation behind a club on Hammond Street. The poor victim had been married three months only. You don’t care, but you have to laugh a little to yourself for being so clever.  
When you’ve dressed and are prepared to leave, you hear the doorbell. You’re half-tempted to hide, not really in the mood for another client. Today, you won’t be angry at them for being so terribly boring, but you tell them that they’re wasting your time. You turn to the doorway for your coat but find it open. In the entry stands a man you never imagined you’d see again. His face is already smiling, and you smile back once you’ve got over the original shock of it all.  
“I didn’t expect to see you again. Do you have another fiancée you need researched?”  
He smiles even wider. “No, Sherlock,” he says. “Nothing like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I promise more dialogue in the future. This chapter only lacked due to it being more of an introduction than anything else.


End file.
